The bell rang twice at dawn. Work day.
Status: Vitality low–stable. Hip wound closed under wrap. Ribs tender.Qi: trace steady. Flow length +2 finger since Circle.Goal: integrate, map resources, avoid exposure.
The yard filled fast. Outer Disciples lined up by sheds. A warden with a scar on his chin "Hara" read from a board.
"Assignments. Water line: Pell, AION, two more. Quarry line: six. Field guard: eight. Kitchen: four. Latrines: don't complain." He looked up. "If you passed the Trial, you work. If you don't work, you don't eat."
Pell nudged AION. "Water is best. Less shouting."
"Confirmed," AION said.
Hara tossed them short wooden poles, a coil of rope, and two sloshing gourds. "River path. South cut. Bring back skins full. Don't drown. If you do, you fail tomorrow's work by default."
Jorin stood with field guards, spear across his shoulder, eyes on AION without turning his head. His lackeys smirked.
Kase crossed the yard last, staff tapping. He stopped near AION. "Two rules," he said. "Don't draw Heaven's eye. Don't start fights you can't end before I need to count bowls. Break either, and you learn the pit again."
"Understood," AION said.
Kase moved on.
They took the south trail in a line of four: Pell, AION, a tall girl named Mira, and a small boy with a constant cough everyone called Reed. The path cut through snake grass and scrub, then dropped to a rocky bed where the river thinned to cold, fast water.
Pell set down his pole. "Fill, tie, haul. Two trips if Hara smiles."
Mira knelt and checked the current with a stick. "Fast today," she said. "Upstream weir must be cracked again."
AION scanned the bank. Water scoured the outer curve. A fallen trunk made an eddy near the inner curve. Best place to dip without losing balance.
Plan: fill skins at eddy; tie in pairs; shoulder carry on poles; rotate loads to avoid failure.
He stepped into the eddy, planted both feet, and filled two skins. Pell mirrored him. Reed slipped at the edge. AION grabbed the rope on Reed's skin and pulled him back before he hit the main flow.
"Thanks," Reed wheezed.
Mira watched AION's feet. "You see the water like a path."
"Everything has cadence," AION said.
They tied skins in pairs and threaded poles through the loops. AION took the heaviest pair for the first carry. Weight bit shoulders. His hip pulled. He adjusted spine angle two degrees and found a position he could hold without tearing the wound.
"Swap every two bends," he said.
"Bossy," Mira said, but she nodded.
They walked. The path rose in steps. Breath 4–4–6. Qi trace slid a little under the navel when cadence held. It helped enough to keep his hands steady.
At the first bend, they set poles down, rolled shoulders, swapped positions. Reed coughed until he gagged, then waved them on.
"Drink slower," Pell said.
Reed nodded, guilty.
"Your mother's paste helped," AION told Pell.
Pell's ears went pink. "She says plants do half the work if you don't rush them. She also says I don't listen."
"You listened," AION said.
Mira snorted. "You two talk like old men."
"Data is data," AION said.
Back in the yard, they poured skins into the kitchen cistern through a stone funnel. Steam and meat smell rose from a side window. A kitchen auntie with heavy arms and sharp eyes counted skins and nodded.
"Three more loads by sunset," she said. She flicked a look at AION's wrap. "You split yourself wide yesterday?"
"Fish with teeth," Pell said.
"Don't rot," she said, and handed them each a heel of bread. "Go."
AION logged: kitchen auntie = resource gate; friendly if work delivered.
Hara met them at the cistern. "You're not slow," he said, almost surprised. "Good." He jerked his chin toward the outer fence. "After second load, Elder wants patrol on south ridge for sign. Wolves, raiders, storm signs. Pair off."
"Sign?" Pell asked.
"Tracks, scrapes, broken brush," Hara said. "If you can't read that, fake courage and follow someone who can."
He left before anyone could ask more.
Mira rolled her shoulders. "We could be field guard by next rain if we don't die," she said.
Pell made a face. "Field guard is just 'stand still and get bored' with extra splinters."
"Better than kitchen," Mira shot back.
AION watched the exchange, filed it under morale patter, and lifted the pole again.
They took the river again. The eddy held. Skins filled. The sun climbed.
Breath: cadence steady.Qi: flow lengthened by one finger on three cycles out of five.Cost: mild headache. Vision drift minimal.
On the way up, a snake cut across the path. Reed yelped and jumped back. AION pinned the snake's head with the pole end and let its body slide past. It struck and hit wood, not skin.
"Don't kill it," Mira said. "Snakes keep mouse nests down."
AION lifted the pole and the snake vanished into grass. He checked Pell's hands. No tremor. Good.
At the yard, Kase stood with two wardens near the notice board. He lifted a slate and wrote a symbol. The crowd drew closer.
Pell craned. "Bounty?"
"Looks like it," Mira said. "We had one last turn—boar in the south orchard. Jorin took it for a tusk and a kiss from Kase's niece."
AION read the chalk. Four lines crossed in a simple mark: warning, not bounty. He memorized the strokes.
Hara said loud, "South ridge shows void cracks again. Small. If you find a crack, you mark it, you call a warden. You don't poke it. You don't toss stones in. You don't piss on it and dare your friends to laugh."
Snickers. Some forced, some real.
"Void?" Pell whispered.
Riven answered inside AION's head. Edges where the world frays. Things slip. Cold wind comes from nowhere. Jorin threw a rat into one when we were ten. It came back a week later without eyes.
"Noted," AION said.
After the second load, Hara waved them to the fence. "South ridge. Two hours. Show me three signs when you return or I call you blind."
They paired off: Pell with AION, Mira with Reed. They took the goat path along the southern bowl. The land there was scrub, rock spines, thorn clumps, and old stumps silvered by sun.
Pell pointed at prints in mud. "Two deer. Doe and a yearling."
"Correct," AION said. He added: stride length, fresh edges, direction east. "Speed: slow."
They marked it with a twig triangle to show other patrols it was logged.
Farther along, a low, cracked flat of stone held shallow grooves that met in a star shape. Pell stepped toward it.
"Stop," AION said.
Pell froze with his toe an inch from the nearest groove. "What?"
"Old mark," AION said. "Not animal."
Riven stirred. We found a few near the slag fields. Elders called them witch scratches and told us to avoid them. Sometimes they hummed in the early morning. Sometimes they burned you without fire.
AION crouched and studied the grooves. They weren't random. They matched the rhythm he had seen in the Den. Cross, triangle, short line. Here, a star with five points, but one point chipped away long ago.
"Don't touch," he said. He snapped a dry stem, dipped it in mud, and drew a copy on bare rock three steps away. Close enough for memory. Far enough to avoid collision.
Pell exhaled. "You like drawing weird things."
"They are not weird," AION said. "They repeat." He nodded at the sky. "Heaven repeats too."
Pell squinted. "That makes me nervous."
"Good," AION said. "Nervous keeps you alive."
They moved on. Near a thorn clump, they found scat with bone shards, wolf, a day old. Marked it. On a stone face, fresh gouges: boar tusks, recent. Marked those too.
At the ridge's far side, wind dropped. Heat gathered against the rock. Air felt thin in a way that wasn't temperature.
Pell rubbed his arms. "Cold wind with no wind."
AION held his breath for one count. The thinness had a cadence—absent, present, absent—like something flickering between two states. He found a hairline seam in the rock, no wider than a twig, five hand-spans long.
Observation: micro-void seam. Not open. Pressure weak.Action: mark, avoid, report.
He stacked three small pebbles by the seam and scratched a warden mark with his shard: three short slashes.
Pell swallowed. "Let's go."
"Now," AION said.
They returned to the yard with the sun high and their skins empty. Hara took one look at the pebble stack drawn on AION's palm and grunted. "You can see," he said. "Good. Stay away from it."
AION nodded.
Kitchen ladle hit bowls. Millet, a slice of carrot, an end of goat. They ate on the ground near the sheds.
AION drew in dirt while he chewed: valley outline, ridge teeth, river bends, shrine, hall, sheds, kitchen, notice board. He added the deer mark, wolf scat, boar gouges, and the void seam.
Pell stuck a carrot end on the map for the kitchen. "Important landmark," he said.
Mira dropped down beside them and pointed with her spoon. "Add the north spring. If the south river gets bad, we pull from there. Water tastes like metal, but it won't kill you."
AION drew the spring. He marked flow arrows. He drew a second small circle behind the hall. "Shrine stone."
Mira squinted. "You really like drawing."
"Pattern," AION said.
"Right," she said, and rolled her eyes without malice.
Kase's aide—scarred chin—walked by and paused at the map. He looked down, looked up at AION, and shook his head once in silent warning. Don't write Heaven on the ground. Then he walked on.
AION wiped the drawing with his palm. He kept it in his head.
By midafternoon, Hara called them to the rack. "You passed. You get sticks and rope. If you prove you won't poke your own eye out, you get iron."
He handed AION a short cudgel—oak, sanded, heavy. Pell got a lighter one. Mira got a longer staff. Reed received a sling and a pouch of round stones.
Hara watched how each gripped. He corrected Mira's hand and pushed her elbow into alignment. To AION, he said, "You hold like you've held other things that kill."
"Fish with teeth," AION said.
Hara snorted. "Right. Train form. No flow. We don't have pills or stones. You build body. You breathe right. If you're lucky, you live long enough to see one Element spark."
He stepped back and barked, "Pairs!"
AION and Pell squared off. AION kept the cudgel close. He worked on small movements only: half-steps, tight parries, taps that taught the arm angles. Pell adjusted. Faster than yesterday.
Observation: Pell learns by feel, not by cue words.Method: show, repeat, anchor with one number.
AION tapped Pell's wrist twice, then once higher. "Three," he said.
Pell repeated. Too wide. AION narrowed his elbow with a nudge and said, "Three." Pell smiled when the stick moved right.
Across the yard, Jorin and his lackey drilled harder. Jorin's form was sharp. He liked low sweeps, then knees. He glanced over twice, not long, just enough to measure.
Elder Kase stood at the porch with the scarred aide, watching everything without seeming to.
After drills, task rotations sent AION and Pell to fence repair on the west edge. The fence there was split-rail, half-rotted and held together with rope.
Two Inner Disciples oversaw it. They wore better robes, clean belts, and iron knives. One—Varn—chewed a twig and talked without looking at the work. "Tie tighter. No slack. Slack lets wolves through and cows out."
AION tied tighter. Pell used the knot Kase's niece had taught him last year—double loop, pull back, lock with twist. It held.
Varn stepped to AION's post, tapped the knot with his toe, and sneered. "You from the slag pits? Your hands tie like stone."
"Teach," AION said. He held the rope out.
Varn blinked, not used to a straight ask. He grabbed the rope and showed the motion slow. "Look with your fingers," he said. "Not your eyes."
AION copied. He logged the motion, then repeated until the knot matched. "Thanks."
Varn frowned, as if the thanks offended him. He moved on.
On the next post, Jorin walked by with the field guards and paused long enough to nudge Pell with an elbow, not hard, just enough to put him off-balance over a ditch. Pell stumbled, caught himself on the rail, and hid his face.
"Careful," Jorin said lightly. He didn't look at AION.
AION stared at the knot and tightened it to the exact count Varn had shown. He did not speak. He logged one more line: Jorin chooses witnesses when he nudges. He wants eyes. Eyes mean story. Stories mean power.
Last light dropped gold across the south fields. Hara released crews with a grunt. "Tomorrow, same. If the notice changes, we shout."
Pell handed AION a boiled root. "Eat. Then sleep. Then don't die."
AION nodded. He ate half and tucked the other half into his wrap.
He walked alone to the edge of the yard where a narrow path bent behind the sheds, out of sight from the hall porch. There, between two old stones half-sunk in dirt, a small slab served as a step down to the latrine trench. The slab bore scratches no one saw anymore because feet covered them.
AION brushed the dust off with his sleeve. The scratches made a cross, a triangle, a short line. The same cadence again.
He did not trace them with his finger. He traced them with breath.
Test: 4–4–6. Tongue up. Pelvis tilt −2°. Shoulder drop −1 cm.Result: Qi trace responded—faint alignment along the same angles as the slab's lines.Cost: mild headache. Eye strain.
Riven stirred. You're going to make yourself bright, he said. And if you shine, Kase will throw you out before Heaven does.
"I will not shine," AION said. "I will learn to hide."
He rehearsed until the cadence nested without effort. Then he stepped away and scuffed the slab dirty again.
The sheds settled. Bodies slept. Dogs barked once, then slept too.
AION lay on straw with the cudgel across his thighs. He mapped the day in his head: river eddy, kitchen gate, Hara's rules, Varn's knot, Jorin's calculated elbow, Kase's warning, the void seam's cadence. He stacked them into columns: resources, threats, patterns, faces.
Pell rolled over and whispered, "Still awake?"
"Yes."
Pell hesitated. "When I was small, I thought Heaven watched good boys and gave them bowls. Then my father fell in the slag pits and we ate moss for a winter. Now I think Heaven watches no one."
"Correct," AION said. "Heaven watches when it wants to punish or to play. Not to feed."
Pell snorted a laugh that had no humor. "You sound like Elder Kase when he's angry."
Silence stretched.
Riven spoke from the place in AION that was not nerves. You said you would carry my name. I carry yours too. If you go too fast, I will pull you back. We die together if you miscount.
AION considered that, then gave the only answer that fit. "Confirmed."
He slowed breath until Qi moved on its own for three counts in a row. He held it there without reaching for more.
State: accepted Outer Disciple.Assets: cudgel, rope, shard, map-in-head, two allies (Pell, maybe Mira), one elder who warns, one warden who notices, one rival who performs.Risks: Jorin's escalation; void seam; Pattern exposure.Next: test hidden practice at dawn, under noise of bells.
Outside, wind shifted. Somewhere up on the south ridge, three stacked pebbles toppled without a hand touching them. The hairline seam widened the width of a thumbnail and then closed again, as if the world had tried a breath and changed its mind.